Pharmacies: Government Funding

Debate between Rachel Gilmour and Sadik Al-Hassan

Wednesday 9th September 2026 Westminster Hall

[Sadik Al-Hassan]

I thank my hon. Friend for his work on the Select Committee. I agree with him. Pharmacy is well placed to help offer additional vaccination services as well as help with a suite of other minor ailments with an expanded Pharmacy First.

I greatly welcome the uplift for 2026-27 in the pharmacy contract, but let us be honest about the scale of the problem: funding fell by £800 million in real terms between 2015-16 and 2025-26, even as prescription volumes rose by 20%. Last year’s funding settlement was a great amount, but that has been eaten up by a great amount of costs, and the Government’s independent analysis found a £2 billion annual funding gap. Nationally we have lost nearly 1,500 pharmacies since 2017—a 15% contraction of the network. In my own constituency of North Somerset, that story is written in bricks and mortar. We have six fewer pharmacies than in 2016.

[Rachel Gilmour (Tiverton and Minehead) (LD)]

Last Friday I visited a community pharmacy in Tiverton, and it was announced on Monday that an application for another pharmacy in my constituency had been turned down. Currently I have three pharmacies in Tiverton when I actually need four. Does the hon. Member agree that we really need to grasp this nettle and make sure we have enough pharmacies on our high streets?

[Sadik Al-Hassan]

I share the hon. Member’s commitment to getting the right number of pharmacies for the population they serve. That is an important part of not just our high streets, but our communities. We must ensure we have pharmacy services available to people who need them, which reduces the pressure on the rest of the NHS system. The amazing pharmacies still working and dispensing in my constituency dispense over 109,000 prescriptions a month. They deliver thousands of Pharmacy First consultations and have saved as many as 7,370 GP appointments since January 2024.

I recently released my vision of what primary care should look like in 2040 and how we should integrate our system better. It has to be true integration, not just in words but in digital infrastructure. We need a primary care network that knows what happens in different parts of the provision, but also understands how that provision affects the rest of the NHS system. We need a true single patient record that extends beyond general practice and into pharmacy; that will make the funding decisions for the Department easier because we will be able to see the activity even better than we do today.

My message to the Minister is simple: pharmacies are not asking for charity. With some reports suggesting that only 14% of pharmacies are profitable, I am asking for money not to make the job of pharmacy easy, but to make it possible, because it should not be this hard. Pharmacists are asking to be paid properly for work they already do brilliantly. I urge the Government to set out a road map for a six-year funding settlement of £600 million in today’s terms, to invest in the workforce, to allow pharmacies to realise their ambition and finally to close the funding gap, before we lose any more of these vital neighbourhood services.